


I Am Feeling a Little Peculiar

by ceann_cinnidh



Category: Sense8 (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-02 03:45:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10936323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceann_cinnidh/pseuds/ceann_cinnidh
Summary: A new cluster is born, and thus the world becomes a little bigger.





	1. And So

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in like half an hour in the middle of the night, so feel completely free to judge me.

Lydia Martin – California, United States

They were selling the lake house. It was their last property that wasn’t their home; the beach house, the Manhattan loft, even the lodge in Oregon. It didn’t all happen at once, it was a slow descent into a tortured financial suffering. It was her father’s failing property development firm that started sinking the boat.  
As Lydia looked out over the still lake from the end of the small dock, she felt a sizzling anger replace her sorrow – anger because the lake house was one of the few things her mum had been able to squeeze out of the divorce and now she was having to sell it while her ex was off with some bimbo from LA and- and now she was crying. Lydia knew it was pathetic. Far more people had it far worse off. Her whole world though, her whole world, was crumbling beneath her so, just for this once, she’d allow herself to feel miserable. 

Between the gentle tears streaking down her face, Lydia saw a woman standing across the lake. Quickly, ashamed, she swiped away her tears careful not to smear away her foundation (which she was stretching with moisturiser) and flicked her hair out of the wetness of her cheeks. The woman was staring at her. Lydia opened her mouth to call out a greeting to the woman – most likely an interested buyer at the open house today – when she saw it. A gun. 

It came swinging up in the woman’s hand and then- then Lydia was in a warehouse and the woman was much closer now and-

Bang. 

She stumbled back so violently she fell. The woman was gone.  
\---

Vernon Boyd – Kebbi, Nigeria

Boyd was never nervous. He supposes it had something to do with the knowledge that if he was caught, well, he could be no worse off. Pick pocketing and thievery was a rather viable career path in the slums of Nigeria and so far, seemed like the only career path. 

A lot of the gangs wanted him - he was broad and tall but he had no stomach for violence. Drug mule-ing was too dangerous: it made you a target to other organised gangs who had no qualms cutting open your intestines on the street. He could try to find an in for the security sector for some rich white couple but none of them liked to hire street kids (too slippery).

So Boyd was stuck, lifting wallets and snagging jewellery. It got harder the bigger he got and yet also easier: he could cajole some street kids into it with small shares, pretend like he was herding them and apologising to anyone they 'bumped' into. It was during one of these scams (of a sort) that he saw her. 

She was sickly and pale, blonde dirty hair and scarcely clothed in a nightdress. He went to move to her trying to pick his way through the crowded street. She looked like she'd been attacked, he had to help her, a white woman alone in a street like this? She'd be attacked again, Boyd had to help her, but before he could move more than a few feet a gun was in her mouth. What was she doing, oh God he had to help-! She pulled the trigger of the gun glinting in the sun light, and fell back into the crowd. No one jumped. No one looked around. No one moved to run either away or to her side. People just kept on about their business. Boyd shoved his way through the thicket of people to where she had been standing but - she was gone. No blood splatter, and no body. 

Nothing.  
\---

Allison Argent – Paris, France

Allison Argent was not a girly-girl thank you very much. She didn’t loiter around tourist hotspots looking for summer romances or gaze off wistfully into the Seine in hopes of catching someone's eye. She could shoot crossbows and long bows and long range sniper rifles and handguns and throw Chinese ring daggers and was now dabbling in the art of swordsmanship. Allison Argent was a warrior of her ancestors. 

This creep, this asshole though, he thought he could feel up her skirt and plaster her in pretty words and she buckle just like any other poor love sick bastard girly girl he'd tried it on. Allison Argent was not that kind of girl. So what she punched him in the face and broke his wrist? It was self-defence! How did she know he wasn't going to drag her into a classroom and hurt her? How did she know he wasn't trying to coerce her into something? The principle didn't seem to agree with her thought process, sexist pig. So now, she was sitting outside the school office listening to her mother and father tear the principle a new one. 

But then she wasn't in the school office. She was in a warehouse. It was cold, her skin breaking out in goose bumps. It looked like one of her father’s storage facilities. (Was she dreaming? She never felt temperature like this in dreams) It was like her fathers warehouse, but much, much dirtier. She turned. A woman. She was lying on the mattress. Then she wasn't - she was sitting opposite Allison in the school office. A gun. (How did she get a gun in the school?). A gun. A gun, a mouth, a bang, a scream. Her scream. Allison's. 

As suddenly as she had appeared she was gone and her parents and the principal came rushing out, "I'm... I'm sorry. I thought I saw-"  
"Allison, don't be stupid." Her mother chastised, "It's just a rat." The creature scuttled out of sight of the group, "Which is another thing I will be raising with the school councillors. Good day." They left.  
\---

Miezcyslaw Stilinski – Lublin, Poland

Mieczyslaw – fondly nicknamed Stiles - was never the kind of boy to keep his nose out of other people's business. Specifically police business. His father was the police chief who sadly had a hard time disciplining Stiles which lead the boy to where he was now: pouring over the details of a serial killers profile. (The guy had been caught, he didn't see the harm, and it wasn't like he was sneaking into Eichen House like last time). 

Stiles was in the house, alone like he always was when he heard it. A kind of dripping. He went to the bathroom to check the tap, but it was fine, same with the shower and bath. He lazily thudded his way down the stairs to check the kitchen tap - fine too. It was infuriating, was a pipe leaking, was it a gutter, maybe the fridge was broken?  
He went to check that it wasn't one of the bathroom pipes leaking in to the living room roof. As he stepped closer to the room it got louder. Not in the 'aha I found it' kind of way, but in the 'horror movie post death-montage' kind of way. Stiles faltered. He kept on slowly moving like his feet weren't quite getting the message to stop, leave it alone. It got louder, began to echo like it always did in the movies. His bare feet kept on stepping forward, hesitantly. 

Stiles crossed the threshold of the room. A derelict building? A warehouse? Heck it could be some weird new-age church for all he knew, but what is was, was not his living room. On a mattress in the sea of waste was a woman. She looked like his mother. He was crying, his throat was thick, what was this, what's happening? No, why did she have a gun in her mouth, no- 

Stiles fell back into the coffee table, blindly scrambled to the bathroom and heaved up his breakfast. He knew what was happening. He was too young to have the disease, his mother had been almost thirty when it happened, we wasn't even twenty yet this wasn't fair, he couldn't die now, his dad needed him, he… He was going to die.  
\---

Jackson Whittemore – London, England

Jackson hated London. Odd for a born and bred London boy like himself, but hey, it was it what it was. Maybe he hated it because it was so busy – so many people and he was still so alone. Jackson was always alone, so freaking alone, so alone. The part he hated most about London though was not the jam packed streets or the awful traffic or the annoying tourists, it was this freaking hospital. Was it sad he could recognise it from the ceiling panels? Probably. He awoke from his hazy stupor rather quickly, too used to this kind of situation now. “Hello again Jack.”

“Ungh.” He hated Dr Ford. 

“Your parents found you fitting on the floor. Again. Good thing they found you too, or you might not have made it this time. You’re not sixteen anymore so they can’t make you go, but I do recommend it.” 

Recommended rehab. Ugh. Stupid Fizz and her stupid dealer gave him a bad cut. It was the worst trip of his life before he’d blacked out – presumably when he started fitting. He’d seen a woman kill herself in some grimy warehouse-like place. Not the oddest thing, he’d tripped and seen far stranger, but it was haunting.  
He felt cold inside, the image lingering unlike it usually did, the echo of the bang ringing in his skull. Her brain matter flashed before his eyes and he choked back a terrified sob. The movements of the gun in her hand played out in his mind like twisted tableaux’s. His eyes filled with tears. Bang. God, what was wrong with him?  
(Well, lots of things really.)

Dr Ford left, and his parents bustled in. There was disappointment painted across their faces. He didn’t have time to think about traumatising trips. Probably the last he’ll have for a while anyway.  
\---

Erica Reyes – Johannesburg, South Africa

Erica was a thrill seeker, a rule breaker, a menace. More than anything though, she was a party girl. Raves were her scene – the thick palpable atmosphere, the music you can feel radiating through your very soul, the almost spiritual connection transcending through yourself to the bodies around you. God she’d never felt so alive. There were no lingering touches of the apartheid, no haunting pains of poverty, no spiteful divide between those who had and those who didn’t. Here, they were all just souls mingling in each other’s bliss. 

The music pulsed through her veins, puppeteering her body like a marionette. Then suddenly she felt the bodies supporting her drop away. The startling loss made her eyes jerk open. The warehouse was empty. No DJ deck, no coloured lights, no trace of a party. The jumping bodies blinked across her eyes before disappearing again. A woman. There was woman, sitting on a mattress. Erica looked around, slightly confused. She must have blacked out; the party must have long since moved on. Had her friends left her behind? 

Erica stepped towards her. “Hello?” The woman locked eyes with her, “Are you okay? Do you need help?” 

The woman raised a gun, and out of engrained instinct, she ducked.

Bang.

The bullet didn’t hit her though. It was in the back of the woman’s head.

As Erica fell back into the thrumming crowd, darkness engulfed her.  
\---

Isaac Lahey – Alice Springs, Australia

Isaac was running. He didn’t like running, he just had to be good at it. The scorching sun beat down on his shoulders as his long legs carried him across the outback. He knew it was dangerous out in the heat with no water, but he’d long since lost any self-preservation. A chant in his head beating to the rhythm of his legs kept him going at such a pace: run, breathe, don’t, look, back, run, breathe. 

The ranch used to belong to his grandfather but the herd had long since died – it was their home now where his father bred dogs. Dogs he was scared he’d see chasing him if he looked behind. It wasn’t his fault this time (it was never his fault, a voice whispered, it was always his fault, lulled another). 

Isaac knew running would only make his dad angrier, make the punishment worse when he got back, but, if he left it long enough, he might be able to sneak in through his window, avoid his father for a few days and by then the drunk had usually forgotten. 

Until then, he’d run across the sandy disused cattle fields and sing his life-long mantra. Run, breathe, don’t, look, back, run, breathe. His Olympic pace stuttered to a faulting stop. There was a woman. He’d come across tourists before, but this woman didn’t have the camera’s they favoured; as a matter of fact she wasn’t even wearing shoes (neither was he, but that was irrelevant). She didn’t look aboriginal either. What she did look like was a woman holding a gun. 

Before he could think of something inspirational to say, she raised it to her mouth, and just like that, Isaac found himself running again – for the first time in his life, he ran home.  
\---

Scott McCall – Mexico City, Mexico 

Scott McCall’s life was going well. He acknowledges that that was where the problem started. Nothing had gone wrong for a while, so of course fate would build up something spectacular to ruin his day/possibly the rest of his life. He and his friends had only been frisked twice or so at the border on their summer road trip into America. He’d been accepted onto the local football team. The local gangs had also given up on him, leaving him and his mum in peace. Life was good. He’d just been accepted into a save-the-animals project down in South America, his mum had thankfully scraped off the loan sharks, and he’d finally grown into his jawline, Dios bless. Life was good. Then suddenly it wasn’t anymore. As was his luck of course, things were going wrong. Of course he’d be the one to be haunted by some abuela’s brother’s cousin’s twice removed aunt’s ghost. 

These were things he would be thinking, if a woman didn’t have a gun in her mouth.

These were thing he would be thinking, if this didn’t feel so terrifyingly real. 

These were things he would be thinking, if he wasn’t sobbing his eyes out.

These were things he would be thinking, if he could form a coherent thought. 

These were things he would be thinking, if his throat wasn’t hoarse as he begged her no.

These were things he would be thinking, if his ears weren’t ringing with a gun shot.


	2. I Wake in the Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cluster expand their minds.

  _California, United States_

Lydia felt the press of the creased linen against her cheek as she burrowed deeper into her thick covers.

She didn’t want to get up. Getting up would mean being amongst people, people who might _know_.

Rationality fizzled out across her mind. Lydia knew no one could possibly know about what she saw at the lake last night, but a relentless voice whispered in the back of her mind: _see-through. Transparent. Everyone can see the crazy in you, Lydia._

She wasn't crazy - but wasn't that what crazy people thought? If her mind was playing tricks on her, it was bad news. The one thing Lydia Martin could rely on was her steady head and if she was losing her grasp on that, she wasn't sure what she'd have left. The woman on the lakeside, that was real. She could feel it in her gut. It was real, and she saw it happen so logically, that meant it had happened.

Lydia tucked the duvet further under her chin, thoughts flitting across her eyelids. She scrunched her face in an effort to dispel the terror but one image would always return to the surface. The lakeside, the tall grass and the still dark surface of the water, undisturbed. She couldn't stop the memory from flooding across her every sense; the taste of pollen in the warm air lazily coursing through the night, the feeling of the damp dock soft and yet strong beneath her block heels, the sound of brazen crickets, and the smell. The smell that didn't belong, that prickled something primal inside of her, the smell that still clung to her nose even now - metal. Industrial and unnerving.

With a heave, she rolled the carcass of her body out of bed. She felt like an antelope. The kind of beast you'd watch being stalked and shredded by powerful predators through the TV. Lydia had lost sight of the lion she once was as she stood in front of the mirror. Or maybe not. Maybe the lion was her mind, her heart the feeble antelope. Either way, she felt an imbalance deep within her soul. Gently, her fingers brushed the photograph tucked into the frame of her mirror - it captured the moment Jordan, grinning, kissed her cheek, lips smothered in strawberry ice cream, at the travelling carnival last year. How she longed for the tranquillity of that moment to wash upon her now. For the ease of his countering nature that softened her edges and hushed the raging hurricane in her mind. Looking into her own elated Polaroid eyes she felt a hum warm through her heart.

Opening the heavy drapes covering her windows, Lydia breathed in the sunlight. For a moment she stood there, feeling very lost in the bathing warmth. That's when she caught it. Just in her periphery. A dark figure in the mirror, wide and tall. She turned, a cold feeling dripping through her chest. Only, when she tried to look at the figure, it had vanished. There was nothing in the mirror but her.

Parrish would believe her, even if no one else would. He always did. So she pulled on her nice skirt, and swiped a bourbon coloured gloss across her lips (she avoided the mirror, fearing the figure would reappear). Functioning on autopilot, she picked up the shoes she had worn last night.

 _Never walk in shoes with bad luck, Lydia_ , grandma always said.

She changed her shoes.

Snagging her keys off of the dresser, Lydia swept out of her room and trotted down the stairs. She felt desperate. Desperate to prove she wasn't insane, so she left with one destination in mind – the Sheriff’s Department, where Jordan Parrish would be, where she could prove a woman had been killed, and where she would prove she wasn't crazy.

 

_Kebbi, Nigeria_

The warehouse was on the edge of the district. It was the closest one to the city, but still held enough of a reputation to keep the police at bay. That was good. They needed that, a reputation, something that could keep the kids safe.

Kids he was currently chasing through the jungle of hammocks, bedding, and junk yard paraphernalia in said warehouse.

“Abbi?” He chased her echoing giggles, as she ran barefoot ahead of him, the laughter of the five other children ricocheting against the walls as they too hid amongst the shadows, “Abbi?” He tried to smother a laugh; bed time was always difficult, yet always annoyingly fun. “Abbi! Time for bed!”

Their ragged hammocks fluttered around him dreamily, and through the cascading curtains of green and violet, he glimpsed a flourish of red. A flash so iridescently golden he faltered in his steps. It was but for a moment, and as another hammock fell past the rippling he recognised as hair, the vision was gone.

Boyd hesitated only for a breath. Ahead of him he saw Abbi, dancing between the veils of hammocks. Her dark skin became porcelain in a twinkling light, before the fabric fell across her and she was once more herself.

Confused, he spun around to see if he could catch sight of the figure once again. Disoriented, the curtains and hammocks and little dancing figures flashed across his vision, intermitted with glimpses of red hair and porcelain skin.

What was this? Was it the woman he had seen the other day, the woman haunting his dreams? The hammocks, like butterflies, distorted the world around him, until he felt a clamping of limbs around his waist. It was his friends, his motley crew of orphans, throwing themselves around him, vacuuming Boyd back to the here and now.

He counted them, passing a hand across each of their heads, grounding himself to the present. Eya, Fola, Olisa, Zaki, Uyo, - Abbi. Abbi wasn't hanging from his waist like the rest of them. A weight launched himself on his shoulders. There she was. Their laughter filtered out of his mind as they all scrambled off to sleep, his grandmother’s voice from years ago coming to him, mystical over the melody that cracked open the night: _“You see that woman over there? She is special. She can see through the eyes of others, she can feel their souls. Who knows if they are lost spirits, or demons, or if they are angels of God?”_

_“Am I special, grandmother?”_

_“Very my boy, very.”_

 

_Paris, France_

 

Thump.

_“You’ve been supressing who you are for too long. Pretending, faking.”_

Thwack _._

_“You’re not like those other girls.”_

Thump, _“You aren’t pretty pink bows and eyeliner, Allison,”_ Thwack _, “You’re not one of them, Allison,”_ Thump.

_“You’re not normal, Allison.”_

The punching bag split and the sand hissed out across the floor, every grain a pearl of her anger, dissipating away. The echoes of her spite melted away in her head, her inner voice sounding too much like her father to be considered ordinary. It didn't matter that the voices sounded like her dad, they could sound like the cookie monster for all she cared, because they were still right. No matter where she went, she'd always be an outsider.

She spat on the floor.

Stupid head teacher for being a stupid misogynist, stupid dad for having a stupid job, stupid mind for playing stupid tricks on her all day involving stupidly attractive boys with stupid cheekbones and stupid blue eyes reflected in stupid shiny bow cases.

As she adjusted the wrappings around her knuckles, she looked over the burst bag with a finality. A calm eased over her, wavering with uncertainty, but a calm none the less. She’d have to remember to thank Aunt Kate for recommending therapeutic boxing.

This is the last time she will ever practice in this basement turned gym. Tomorrow, she will face a new one, with a new bedroom and a new local school and a new coffee shop to hide in.

Groans of the furniture overhead broke her reverie. The moving men had blessed her with a nickname now, her mum knew how they all liked their coffee and tea, and her dad knew them well enough to ask about the kids. Allison was sick of it all. That's how often they moved. Allison hated it all. Her fists hauled another bag onto the hook to meet its unholy doom and just like that, she was a train going too fast, a fire burning too hot, an axe thwacking too deep into the cherry pine of the forest.

But Allison was also a sea. A vast expanse of glass that no one could see through; ( _thump_ ) she was peculiar enough to make peoples toes recoil and strange enough ( _thwack_ ) to make peoples stomachs lurch and no matter how desperately she tried to climb upon land ( _thump_ ), her fingers slipped through the sand and she fell back into herself.

_(Thump, thwack, thump, thump)_

She was her mother’s daughter and she was a daddy’s girl and she was pretty and clever and she was lonely and she didn’t want to move again and now she was crying and she would never be like the other girls, she would never be like the other girls, she would never…

_Lublin, Poland_

 

He didn’t tell his dad. Not about the hallucinations, not about the woman he saw, and most definitely not about the girl standing above him in the reflection of the glass table. She wasn’t really standing above him looking over his shoulder (he checked) but no matter how hard he rubbed his eyes she wouldn’t vanish. Her eyes were swollen with sleep, a deep mahogany looking up (down?) at him, her hair a mass of erupting blonde curls tied above her head, a faded smudge of red across her mouth.

Stiles tried not to look at her. He kept his hand under his chin, to try and manually stop his head from swivelling towards her, except he couldn’t draw his tear-filled eyes away from her own. He gave in to the celestial pull to properly examine her. As Stiles looked down at her reflection it became distorted like she’d dropped a stone in a puddle – she was gone. Finally, releasing a choked gasp of relief, he let the tears fall.

Gone. Problem solved.

Whenever there was a problem ( _this_ was a problem) Stiles liked to fall back on his research - long red strings and block capital letters and printed pages – except he couldn’t do that now, because he’d learnt all he could about frontotemporal dementia many years ago, and there was no stopping it. All you could do was buckle in for the ride.

He didn’t want to. He wanted to get off the cart before the music even began. Stiles knew though – he knew the operator was an asshole and before he could screw his head on straight the train would be plummeting towards the loops. He already felt the gears crunching beneath him.

The tears tracking down his face trickled into the hollows and dips of his neck, and the sensation jolted him slightly. No; he’d be fine he was just overreacting, it was stress and the like from college and work and looking after his dad, he’d just eaten too much Quorn chicken nuggets; everything would be okay.

It had to be.

He promised his mother on her death bed that he’d take care of dad, even as she screamed and howled at him calling him a monster, a demon, begging the doctor to exorcize her poor child before he killed someone because he was _going_ to kill her – if Stiles got sick like that, he would never be able to fulfil his promise. He would never be able to take care of his dad and if that happened his dad would-

No. Stiles would not go there today, thank you very much, no sir. He sniffled back his tears, wiped his face on his hoodie, and carried on munching down his corn flakes.

The girl in the table was gone.

 

_London, England_

 

He loathed the tube with every fibre of his being. Sweaty and crowded and hot. Plump businessmen looming over him, envying the seat he nabbed, a crying baby drooling over his sleeve as its mother tried to round up the rest of her brood, odd musical instruments jamming into his ribs carried by shady street performers, hipsters spilling their ridiculous coffee over his jeans and the smell of week old kebabs. Oh yes, Jackson hated the tube. What he wouldn’t give to be there now.

It was the silence getting to him in here. Smothering his city boy soul and throwing off the rhythm of his heartbeat. Sure, the rec rooms were always bubbling with some kind of activity, but it was the wrong kind of busy. The supressed kind, that made him cringe. He’d never felt claustrophobic before but in here he certainly did.

The people in those rooms were irritating losers trying to goad him into playing the football table with them, some of them straight up crazy - who were nowhere near clean - trying to force feed him the goldfish, and the other lot trying to recruit him into their Buddhist cult or whatever.

As it went for space outside of his room, that left him the disused bathroom on the third floor, or the janitor’s closet. He preferred the latter.

Preferred it, because he and the janitor, Ricky, go way back to his first time in the rehab centre. Preferred it because his therapist didn’t know about this hiding spot. Preferred it because if the janitor popped in, all Jackson had to do was get him off and he’d in turn get a bag of weed to take the edge off of his more serious cravings.

That was where he was now. Patiently waiting for his next baggie propped up against a shelf in the dark, crammed in next to the hoover and a crate of toilet roll, mulling over how he’d sunk this low.

Jackson looked dejectedly at the shiny metal mop bucket. Ricky probably hadn’t even started his shift yet. Then he really looked at the mop bucket because the reflection wasn’t him. A girl with dark flowing hair, a pale complexion, a cut jaw line – he scrambled closer to the bucket and she moved with him, as him, he reached up a hand – a delicate _feminine_ hand – to touch his own face and the girl did too. Had Ricky mixed his latest batch? Whatever it was it was good, to do something as nuts as this. This wasn’t weed. He poked at the butt of his last roll on the floor next to him, smelt it, dissected it with his shaking fingers – it was just weed. He looked back at the reflective metal bucket, and all he saw was his own face.

It was just weed.

It sure didn’t feel like it.

 

Johannesburg, South Africa

 

Erica thought kids only snuck in through their windows in movies. The stupid American movies her sister watched and ones she secretly enjoyed too. Yet here she was, hauling her weary body through the window frame, knocking her various trinkets askew, trying to crawl back in and pretend she hadn’t spent all night at a rave. Most likely giving the neighbours an eyeful as she tried to shimmy the rest of her body through, she couldn’t bring herself to care. Shamelessly, she hoped they were watching. If they did happen to catch a peak, at least she was getting her money’s worth. Not that anyone knew how much her surgery cost.

Grappling with the window sill, Erica propelled herself the rest of the way in, to flop dramatically onto the bed. Above her, fluttering across her wall the way the memories did across her mind, Erica wistfully examined her favourite photos. Not with longing, but with perhaps contentment. Her favourite one was from at least two years ago. Her hair was still cropped to fit with the rest of the boys at school, her jaw still stubbled and her chest still levelled, but it was the first time she’d ever dared to wear makeup. It had been at a sleepover (she’d told her mum it was game night with the boys). That moment was her epiphany, if you will.

Shucking her party dress, she sluggishly sauntered to her bathroom to wash away the good night.

 _“Do you know what we had to tell the neighbours?”_ Erica flipped on the tap and looked down into the filling basin, _“That you’d gotten a scholarship for a school in America,”_ The water wasn’t crystalline as it settled; an image settling within it. _“And that the girl now living in Erick’s room is our niece from Cape Town! And that Erick-slash-Erica was a family name!”_ The picture of a dark haired boy with a notably foreign face. Her eyebrows creased as easily as bread tore.

She’d have to reconsider not listening to the pastor from the back row every Sunday.

The figure wasn’t looking at her face on, rather out of the corner of his eye. Curiously, she leant closer. Strange things were ought to happen on this side of suburbia, but this was the strangest yet. Exciting thoughts of monsters and ghouls and ghosts in the drain pipes filled her mind and although her repertoire of horror-flick knowledge told her not to touch the water, she couldn’t but help tap the surface with the pads of her fingertips. The ripples distorted the image and it dissipated back into the water. It was clear once more.

Noises of the neighbourhood waking up fizzled like radio static, falling out of importance, because echoing in the black of her eyelids was a boy with pallid skin and haunted brown eyes.

Erica smelt adventure.

 

_Alice Springs, Australia_

 

Silence.

It was always quiet.

Not even birds dared to breathe at the ranch.

Isaac’s bloodied toes curled into the concrete beneath the kitchen window as he tentatively peered beyond the glass, his chest thrumming with anxiety. He felt like a crumbling leaf, quivering, ready to disintegrate at the slightest hush of wind. Breakable.

He, Him _, Dad_ , wasn’t inside, but His presence still loomed, blanketing the room in a writhing mist. An empty whiskey glass on the table; an open newspaper by the fridge; a greasy plate in the sink. A lethal two-pronged fork, imbedded in the wall.

Isaac could still feel it, brushing his curls that morning as it was rammed into the plaster by his head almost like it was merely an extension of his dad’s fist. Remembering the smell of the alcohol and the bacon and the weight of his dad’s body that never quiet touched his own - Isaac had to tame back his stomach from lurching.

His toes flexed and relaxed as he tried to centre his tornado of paranoia. _He_ was not in the kitchen. That meant if he opened the window, he could make his way to his bedroom via the staircase just at the end of the hall. It was right there, his gateway to safety – or the illusion of – he just had to be brave enough to pursue it.

Isaac was never brave enough. _He_ could be anywhere in that house.

So, he pried open the barn door hoping the screech of the bolts wouldn’t reach unwanted ears, skirted around the pens of his dad’s muzzled dogs, and dug out the trainers he’d stashed beneath the old dusty horse equipment for occasions such as this.

Isaac dropped despairingly to the floor. He pulled on the Chuck Taylors trying to wrangle his heel around the drawn laces – he also purposefully ignored the smudged sharpie on the inside of the fabric marking them as Cameron’s. Isaac felt a catch of breath as he looked up and saw, standing in the middle of a pen of _His_ mongrels, a boy.

He held in his arms a puppy, so small and so delicate and so peacefully content it couldn’t possibly be one of His. The pup was too clean for a place like this. The boy cradled it like a baby, cooing softly. The vision overwhelmed Isaac and he wondered: had the pronged fork stabbed right through his eye? Had the last few hours been some kind of spiritual journey to peace? Was this an angel, haloed by the light filtering through the roof, come to relieve him of this earthly hell? They locked eyes.

No. Isaac was dehydrated and had a dash of heatstroke. He knotted off the laces on his hand me down shoes and pulled himself off the ground. His dad would kill him if he found Isaac in here, so boldly, Isaac walked past the figure and was unsurprised to find it gone by the time he turned back around.

An angel.

He would be so lucky.

 

_Mexico City, Mexico_

 

Scott could’ve called the police. He should have really. He’d sat on the idea all night but they’d think he was crazy. No body, no gun, nothing. The police didn’t come to this side of town and anyway – she hadn’t really been there. She’d been in a warehouse somewhere far away. Scott wasn’t sure what was happening to him.

Dr Alan Deaton might be a vet, but he was wise. If Scott ever needed wisdom, it was now. He sat, staring at Tess’ most recent litter of puppies, mulling over what Deaton had said to him.

_“What if you saw something bad happen, but there’s no proof of it ever having actually happened?”_

_“A little context might help.”_

_“You’ll think I’m crazy.”_

_“I promise to reserve any judgement, Scott.”_

_“I was on my bike last night outside the city, and I saw a woman. She shot herself and there was nothing I could do, but when I went over to her, she was gone. No gun, no body, no blood. There was nothing, like it hadn’t happened at all, but I saw it, I swear I did… And now you think I’m crazy.”_

_“You’re not crazy Scott, and you’re not a liar, but strange things are known to happen in the desert. If there was nothing there that you could find, perhaps its best to put it out of your mind.”_

But he couldn’t. Reaching over the puppy pen, he lifted out one of the wriggling babies, cradling her to his chest trying to come up with answers. Cartels and gangs and cover-ups prodded at his mind. Deaton was right. He had to forget about it.

All Scott wanted was to meet a pretty girl, save up for vet school, and play soccer. He’d keep his nose out of any business that wasn’t his own.

He turned, pup in arms and there sitting on the floor was a very blonde boy pulling on very dirty trainers. Scott went to say something but before he could stutter out a ‘who’, ‘what’, or ‘why’, the boy picked himself off of the floor, = dusted sand of all thing off of his trousers, and skulked straight past him. Scott’s eyes tried to follow the stranger but a blink and he was gone.

Keeping to his own business, was going to prove difficult.

Especially if _that_ was likely to keep on happening.


	3. I Step Outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get even more peculiar...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how long I've been suffering from writers block with this chapter, but finally we got there! All of your amazing support has kept me going, and I hope you enjoy the latest chapter!

_California, United States_

 

“Lydia?”          

“Hi.” The Sherriff’s department scurried around them, a hive of ringing phones and typing keyboards and rushing deputies. Lydia stood amongst it all like a lost child, holding Jordan’s gaze like it was a lifeline – and with what was going on in her head, maybe it was. “Jordan,” she finally managed out, trying to project her voice across the distance between them, “I need your help.”

“What’s happened?” Jordan gently takes her elbow as he steps forward, and leads Lydia towards his desk. Jordan had that way with his voice, where he could make it seem like you were the only two in the room. He could create the safest haven with his words and maybe that was why Lydia was here; because he made her feel safe.

“Something’s happened. And I don’t know who else will believe me.” She swallowed thickly, trying to dislodge the croak in her throat. Lydia was very aware as Jordon gently pushed her down into the seat, that this was the chair that people sat in when they reported a crime. He pulled his wheeled chair around in front of her and sat, an intense look in his eyes.

She knew how his mind would jump to the worst of conclusions so she quickly tried to gather her thoughts. It wouldn’t work though, everything was so muddled in her head and she wasn’t used to it, wasn’t used to this fog, and couldn’t make her mouth form the words. _I saw a woman die._

“Lydia, do you need me to be a friend right now or a deputy?”

“Both.” And it all came tumbling out, “I saw a woman, down at the lake house last night. I thought she was one of the potential buyers so I called out to her, but when I spoke, she pulled out a gun and- Parrish she shot herself. My parents found me down at the lakeside screaming and they told me no one was there, dead or alive, and there hadn’t been a gunshot. But it was real Jordan, I swear to god it happened and I-”

“Okay, okay, I believe you." He looked between her eyes with a strong brow and a warm energy, as she released a breath she'd been unable to let go of, "Let’s go down to the lake and have a look, okay?”

“I already went there this morning. There was nothing there.”

“Maybe there was something you missed.”

“I never miss anything.” She missed the fond smile across his face.

“Then why did you come down here? To the Sheriff’s Department, I mean? If you’re so sure there’s no proof of anything happening, I don’t think there’s much I can do. And I think you know that.”

“I need to know who that woman was. I figured maybe she was a missing person or something, and you might be able to help me take a look at the database, or the files or something. Jordan I – I need to know she’s a real person. I need to know this isn’t all in my head.”

“Alright then. Let’s get to it.”

 

_Kebbi, Nigeria_

 

He held her tiny hand in his own, stroking the knuckles softly like he remembered his mother once doing. Abbi was sick and all Boyd could do was watch. His weary heart recognised it as the illness that took his mother.

“Abbi?” She didn’t respond, but Boyd had to hope she could hear him through her fever delirium anyway. “I need to go just now. I’m going to get water, and while I’m away the others will take care of you.” He gently pulled away his hands to stand but Abbi clung on. Leaning down, he kissed her forehead, and it seemed to be enough to pacify her until Zaki was there holding her hand in his place.

“Will you be long?”

“I do not know. It isn’t too far to the water pump, but who knows how long the queue will be. It might not even be working today.” He gathered a few of the empty plastic water canisters, all of which were comically light, knocking into each other and clanging in their emptiness. At least, he would have found it comical, if he was at all feeling in the mood today.

“I could come with you?” He looked down in to the face of his young friend. One day, the street kids that flocked to Boyd would have to learn how to fend for themselves – not that they couldn’t already, but they’d have to figure out how to exist without Boyd, and without each other. If something happened, they’d have to be prepared for that. _Not_ _today_ , he thought, and nuzzled his friends scalp with his open palm. _Not_ _today_.

“That is okay, Zaki. Take care of Abbi. You are in charge while I am gone.” The young boy – whose age _he_ didn’t even know – nodded solemnly, with a noble tilt squaring out his chin.

-

The walk to the water pump should have taken just as long as it normally did. Except this time, Boyd fell behind. He fell behind because as he was steadily making his way down one of the nicer streets, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned, drawn to the sharp sensation breathing down that side of his mind, and was confronted with an alley he passed almost every day.

He never paid it much attention until now.

Marble. At least he thought it was marble. He saw it on TV once. The odd slabs freckled the ground sporadically until they merged into a paved path down the narrow lane, as if they had been there since forever. It was the same way with the brick work on the adjoining buildings – white paint fading into its full opacity down the alley. This, he realised, was a corridor.

There was a corridor, with doors leading off and a landing just around a corner and a window somewhere filtering in sunlight, and it was in the middle of the street. Dazed, Boyd looked around him until his eyes swivelled to a tall mirror by a market stand. Where his reflection should have stood, confused looking over his shoulder, there was instead a golden skinned boy with a mop of curly blond hair on his head.

Boyd should have been panicked. Instead, his grandmother’s words washed over him from many years ago: _“The world is a very strange place, my child.”_

He stepped onto the marble pathway and didn’t look back.

 

_Paris, France_

 

“So Allison, what do you think of your new room?”

“It’s nice.” The atmosphere encompassing the dining table wasn’t awkward, but to Allison it felt stifling. A man, Gerard, her grandfather, had shown up to talk to her dad about company business. This had never happened before.

Allison had never met the man in her life.

Something about him set her on edge. He was too reptilian. The stranger sat diagonally from her across the table asking polite questions about her education, about her archery, about her future, but whatever it was about him, she couldn’t meet his eye. Allison tried, but something primal along the back of her neck said _no_. _Don’t look_.

So she faked it. Looked at his nose, looked at the crinkles between his eyebrows, looked at his ear, anything to not meet his eye directly. She did look at his eyes, when he looked away, but if it ever seemed like his pupils would swivel close to her, she’d bend her head and let her hair fall across her face.

Untrustworthy.

Suspicious.

She knew little about the company her grandfather ran: something to do with biological studies, of which her dad ran the security for. One time she’d googled the company and all it would tell her was that BPO produced pharmaceuticals focusing around brain chemistry. Digging through the history of the company, she found they had once been the leading experts in lobotomies.

After that discovery she closed the tab.

“What colour are you thinking of painting it?” Allison focused on Gerard’s teeth. Most likely false. They were too even, too pearly.

“I’m not sure. It depends how long we’re planning on staying.” Her mother’s fierce scowl was audible. Allison was fully prepared for a scolding but before her mother or father could get there, Gerard intervened.

“Now, don’t you worry about that. I have some business for your father; you’ll undoubtedly be here for the year at least. You never know Allison, you might even stay here permanently.”

“That’s not your decision, dad.” Allison looked at her father, and she tried to believe that was true. Gerard’s sly smile said otherwise.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of business?” she reached for the salt to avoid meeting his eye.

“Well,” Her mother started, only to be swiftly cut off.

“Now, now, Victoria, we don’t discuss business over the dinner table. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it Allison; you’ll know soon enough.” Allison felt a hot surge of anger through her blood at Gerard’s condescension, her fingers tightening around the silverware. Just as the fork began to bend, a strong warm hand rested over her own, stroking her knuckles into a calm.

Allison felt an odd tranquillity seeing the larger tan hand settled across her pale fist – she should be shocked, she should be scared, she should be screaming stark raving mad. Allison was none of these things as she followed the hand up to an elbow, a shoulder, a face; it was a man, boy really, smiling softly as he sat in the empty chair beside her. His jaw was squint and his hair a curly mess. “Just close your eyes. Breathe. Relax.”

She took a deep breath through her nose, and when she opened her eyes again he was gone leaving her alone in the cold dining room.

Gerard’s statement hung over the table the rest of dinner, and Allison wasn’t blind. She saw the looks passed between her parents. She wanted to know what it meant.

_You’ll know soon enough._

_Lublin, Poland_

 

“So, Mieczyslaw, how can I help you today?” Dr Nowak’s pale face settled into Stiles’ vision uncomfortably. He had been the family doctor for years and perhaps that was why Stiles didn’t like him – too many bad memories. This had been a bad idea coming here.

“I don’t know, I mean I’m probably overreacting, it’s probably nothing, but I thought just in case I should come in and check with someone but now I’m here it just seems stupid, so I’m gonna go and let you get on with that kid that’s throwing up in the waiting room, you have fun with him-“

“Stiles. Sit down kid, what’s troubling you?” He swallowed focusing his sight out of the window. He didn’t know if he could say it out loud. His throat was thick with an emotion he couldn’t place.

“I’ve been seeing things.”

Suddenly Nowak’s soothing demeanour shifted into action – he grabbed the notebook sitting on his desk and pulled the pen from behind his ear, scribbling with a seriousness that sent sweat slithering down Stiles’ spine.

“Things, what kind of things?” He watched the clock tick by in apathy. “Stiles it’s important you tell me. I don’t want to scare you by jumping straight into your mother’s symptoms but the sooner you tell me the sooner we can start crossing off possibilities.”

Possibilities? There were no other possibilities. Stiles had the disease of his mother and there was no stopping it, no curing it, no help for him anywhere. But hey, he thought, what did he have to lose?

“People. It started a few days ago. A woman, she shot herself in the head, she was the first one.”

“The first one?” The scratching of the pen set his teeth on edge.

“There was another.” The tears welling up behind his eyes were like an unstoppable force swallowing up any reservations Stiles had about holding back the truth. “I was sitting at the table and I could see her in the reflection of the glass. She looked just as confused as I did. I turned to look because I could’ve sworn she was so real, and no one was there.”

“Did she shoot herself too?” The question was quiet. Pressing.

“No. No, she just stared.”

Movement by the window caught his attention. A boy sitting on the counter holding a coffee, the steam bathing his face. He was blonde and curly and harmless but Stiles had never seen a more terrifying sight.

“Stiles?” He couldn’t tear his eyes away, “Stiles, are you seeing one now?”

“Yeah.”

-

Stiles wrapped his arms around himself as he left the building entering into the cold air. A hard shoulder collided with him so strongly he was almost completely spun around. The man turned to glare at him, steel grey eyes colliding with his brown, and it felt like gravity took a swing at him, like he was falling and those grey eyes were his only anchor.

Both of their feet kept on walking.

Something in him pulled him around to stare after the stranger disappearing around the corner, something pulling at him to follow. Right now though, he had to go home. He had to tell his dad. So his feet kept on moving, and Stiles filed the leather jacket and the moon grey eyes away in his mind, as just another _what if_.

 

_London, England_

 

Jackson had a roommate. This was a problem. He had to get rid of him and he only knew one way that could send someone to twenty four hour watch, stat: heroin. Heroin he could get from Ricky. No, he wasn’t going to force the guy into a relapse, just shove it under his mattress and wait for room checks, and then he could watch happily as what’s his face was shipped off to the closed unit.

There was only one problem. For Ricky to hand over the harder stuff, you had to give him a little more than a cute grind or a hand job.

Ricky wasn’t unattractive, per se. He was a slimy bastard, but only in nature. Physically, he was nothing to be ashamed of – tall and well-structured if a little scruffy – but he had the charm of a mangled goat you ought to put down. The kind of guy who thought his Clio was a Cadillac and wanted the whole world to know it.

Leaving his dignity behind in his shared bedroom, he left to find the solution.

-

The grime coating the shelf grated against his gaunt hips. He could feel his blunt nails cutting grooves in the old softening wood and the strain from his thighs all the way to his toes was becoming unbearable. Ricky was grunting nonsensical words into Jackson’s ear that he did his best to block out.

Instead, Jackson focused on the mirage in front of him. A girl, with enchanting red hair, and full lips, and soft eyes. She sat to attention on a crate of soap on the other side of the shelf, shuffling through bits of important looking paper, talking to someone he couldn’t see.

Ricky’s stubble grated into the back of his neck, irritatingly. He couldn’t say he’d slept with many guys – truth was, it was fewer than he’d like to admit, favouring girls and their soft comfort – but any guy he had slept with had refrained from the facial fuzz. Jackson wondered if that had been a conscious decision on his part.

The girl swivelled slightly on her crate before locking eyes with him and stalling in her movements, mouth agape, like she couldn’t believe Jackson was real; like she wasn’t the one in his head. “Where am I?” She asked, a look of trepidation painted across her features. “I-I was just in the Sheriff’s Department, this is not the Sheriff’s Department. Please tell me where I am.” She shuffled on the crate like she was terrified to get up.

He hadn’t had a hit in a while – that meant this was real. But if it was, why couldn’t Ricky see her?

“Hello? Can you hear me?” Tears filled her eyes, as if Jackson was the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen.

“Yes.” He breathed out. Ricky growled obscenities in his ear, thinking Jackson’s conversation was for him.

“Where am I? What is this?”

Jackson directed his eyes to the aged poster clinging to the wall near the door. It was a map of the underground, partially covering a map of the hospital, playing holder to an array of take-out menus.

“I’m in London?”

He nodded. If Ricky caught on that he was talking to ghosts, that would be a one way trip to the psych ward.

“London?” She looked around the store cupboard disdainfully, fearfully, but there was a shard of intrigue in her eye as if she’d just come across a most challenging Sudoku, “That’s not possible, I’m- I’m in California, I can’t be in London as well.”

“I think I’m losing my mind.” He muttered, unable to cap the horror spreading through his chest at the thought of being a nut job.

“No, I’m the one losing my mind,” The red-head argued stubbornly, with so much conviction Jackson almost believed her, “You’re the one in my head, not the other way around here. And you can do much better than him.” And with that, the apparition was gone, and he had to wonder, which one of them was right. Who was imagining who?

And god wasn’t that a thought.

 

_Johannesburg, South Africa_

 

Middle class laughter danced up from the garden, in a harmony of racism, tax evasion, and hypocrisy. Erica sat on the bathroom floor slouched before the mirror, her dressing gown slipped off of her shoulders exposing her bare chest.

Her sobs racked her body, the guests below oblivious to her existential breakdown. They were always oblivious. Their white chiffon dresses and fuchsia bloom perfumes, lemon tarts and buttercream cupcakes – they were blind and it disgusted her.

The door creaked open in Erica’s periphery but she didn’t have the energy to pull up her robe or wipe her sodden face, too spent from pouring her heart out across the tiles.

“Oh, oh I am so sorry, forgive me!” She turned to see a man, his eyes resolutely flickering around the corner of the ceiling, jolted into shock by the tableaux he’d just intruded on.

He was black. This was what Erica noticed first. Black and muscular and not the kind of man who would be permitted into the neighbourhood let alone the house. Her mother would have a fit if she saw his bare feet on her precious marble flooring. In fact, Erica, thought, he looked like the kind of patsy her father would employ. She pulled her dressing gown back over her shoulders, folding it tightly around her chest finally succumbing to sympathy for the stranger. He was unused to her blaring nature, after all.

“I-I’m sorry, are you here to see my father?” She sniffled back her runny nose, embarrassment finally catching up with her. She used her sleeve to wipe her face. “Hello?” The man’s eyes tracked down to meet hers. He looked at her confused, before looking back down the hall from where he presumably came.

“I’m sorry, but where am I?”

“What? Aren’t you here for my father?”

“Who?”

“Not to be rude, but who are you? Where are you from?” Erica’s brow wrinkled in suspicion. If he was here to rob them, he was being awfully bold.

“I am Boyd. From Kebbi.” He said it like it was obvious, like she was the stupid one, a hesitant little smile quirking around his eyes, “Kebbi, Nigeria?”

“Nigeria?” She tried to supress the hysterical lilt in her voice, but his response proved she hadn’t.

“I’m sorry, but where is this if it’s not Nigeria?” The stranger looked down on her, not condescendingly, but something close to that.

“Johannesburg.”

“I am in South Africa?”

“Yes. You sound confused by that.”

“I am very confused by that.” Boyd from Kebbi Nigeria slid down against the open door frame of the bathroom until he was sitting, looking around again, fascinated, “Somehow I walked down an alley, in Kebbi and ended up in a bathroom in Johannessburg.”

Erica couldn’t deny she felt drawn to ‘Boyd’, despite his oddness. She had an affinity towards strangers who broke into her house. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Recently, there has been a lot that hasn’t made sense. In fact, I think I’m getting quite used to it.” There was a sincerity in his voice, a sadness in his face, which made Erica feel exposed. Like he was being honest with her. She found she believed him. How could she not considering the pale woman she saw, the boy in the sink, the odd smells she couldn’t possibly smell and tastes she couldn’t possibly taste. Her world was becoming a very peculiar place.

“Me too.”

Their eyes locked in a distant understanding. She felt swathed in more than just her dressing gown – she felt swallowed by the warmth of his eyes, the eyes of a stranger who had been kinder to her than her own mother. Another chorus of laughter fluttered up through the cracked bathroom window from soiree below, breaking the peaceful comfort that had settled over the pair of them.

Boyd cleared his throat, “You know my name. What is yours?”

“Erica. My name is Erica, Boyd from Kebbi Nigeria.”

“Erica.” He smiled at her, warm and whole and so very pure, and it was all it took to crack her foundations, “Hey there, don’t cry.” He shuffled from the door to envelope her in his gentle arms, “Whatever it is, it will always pass.”

“That’s what my mother’s pastor said.” Her voice was horribly thick as she leant into the stranger who somehow felt so familiar, “’It will pass – all these confused feelings and unholy thoughts. They will pass’. They won’t ever pass, Boyd from Kebbi, Nigeria. Not ever”

“What were the thoughts?” She couldn’t see where his eyes were looking, but she was looking at the tears she’d shed over him, specifically the one that had settled in the dip of his exposed collarbone.

“I was a little boy, and I thought ‘that’s a very pretty dress’. I thought ‘I want that doll for my birthday’, I thought ‘I have a crush on that boy down the street’.”

“You were a little boy?”

“Mm. I ran away to America with the money my grandmother left me, and I became a woman. And my family will never forgive me for that.” She waited for her head to hit the tile, and for the bloodcurdling screams of the imminent murder to disturb the garden party, but Boyd held her just the way he had before.

“Why did you come back? From America?”7+

“I was so poor by the end of it all, that I was living on the streets. Used up the last of my money to make a call home, and my sister bought me a plane ticket back.”

“That’s very brave of you, Erica. Erica. My aunt was named Erica – it means noble. I think you are very noble. I also think you are very beautiful.” She snorted, ungracefully, but he wasn’t deterred, “I do! I think you are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on. Truly.”

She looked up into his eyes, her mind fumbling around in a blind haze.

A loud clang from the party caught her attention just for a second, her head twisting instinctively towards the sound, and as Erica looked back, she was alone in the bathroom once more.

 

_Alice Springs, Australia_

 

Her name was Maggie. She was beautiful. She worked almost every day in the diner and whenever Isaac would go in, she’d sneak him a free black coffee when her manager wasn’t looking. Her eyes were pools of honey and her smile was a ray of sunshine. If you looked close enough you’d see a dusting of freckles across her warm skin.

She kept her hair tied above her head, but on Thursdays she’d wear it down, a lion’s mane of kinks and curls, the colour of rich mahogany. Thursday was the day her sweetheart came in – Isaac was coaching her through wooing him. Funny considering he had never wooed and never been wooed, but that was the joy of being a sidekick he supposed – having the responsibility of moral support.

The diner was a little too nice for Isaac, wild, unruly, awkward, Isaac, but as long as Maggie kept on surreptitiously filling his mug, the manager wouldn’t throw him out.

It was Thursday again today.

Maggie had brought him a milkshake and she was smiling at him, and he was smiling at her, and he wondered – were his parents like that once? Was his dad handsome and bashful and sweet like Maggie’s beau? Was his mother shy and entranced and honeyed with love like her?

No.

He’d never met his mother beyond her gravestone, and he’d never known his father beyond the bottle. All his father was, was cruel and all his mother was, was a dream. The nicest dream he’d ever have.

Just as he felt the dark hands of self-pity crawling up through his chest as they always seemed to do, the hairs on the back of his neck raised. Behind him.

It wasn’t his father, his dad’s presence was far more encroaching, but this one was observing. Sad. Too vacant and too full all at once. He turned slowly on his red leather stool to see a boy, his age, sitting on the table of an empty booth.

Isaac let a small smile slip between his cheeks, and turned around to continue his coffee.

By the time Isaac left, the boy had gone and Isaac had a little happy feeling in his heart. A little seed of light. So much relief to be found through one kindred spirit. Not even the long trek back to their house in the middle of nowhere could dampen his little feeling – not his fathers boots, freshly dirtied on the porch, not the new crack in the newly repaired living room window, not even the sound of one of his father’s dogs, barking inside.

 

_Mexico City, Mexico_

 

Sweat trickled down his back, as the sun beat relentlessly onto the group of four. Scott had always been bad at soccer, yet today was different. Today he could feel the energy, feel the motion, like he’d only ever known the ballet between him and the ball.

Today he was actually _good_.

He passed to David, tall and lanky and only a little more coordinated than him, with a soft kick only for someone else to intercept it. Scott squawked indignantly, but his friends didn’t seem to care about the stranger that had just hijacked their lazy soccer game.

He was pasty like he hadn’t ever seen the sun, and sallow like he didn’t want to. Blonde and a little handsome, and like one of the addicts he’d seen at the hospital. Scott didn’t know how to handle this newcomer, but he was nothing if not welcoming – he said nothing and let the stranger play with the ball.

The stranger flicked the ball across the alley to Maria, the nerd of their loser quartet, and Scott’s three friends erupted into odd cheers. “Wow Scott, you can actually pass a ball today, I’m impressed!” The stranger’s brow sank into a frown matching Scott’s own. “Scott?” The boy looked down at his hands, confused. He turned to look at Scott, and when they locked eyes Scott felt the world spinning beneath his feet and the sky whirling around his head; and then he was the one standing next to the burnt out dumpster across from Maria. The blond was gone, because Scott was standing there in his place. “You okay, dude?”

“Didn’t you just see that guy?” A troubled silence met his hysteria.

“What guy?” His cousin Miguel looked up and down the alley, as though he might suddenly spot someone if he kept on turning his head in the same two directions.

“The white guy, he just passed you the ball?”

“Um, Scott I think you have heat stroke. _You_ passed me the ball. Have you drank anything today?” Maria kicked the worn out soccer ball against the adjacent wall with an obvious thump, as if emphasising her point. She had no point, because Scott did not pass her the ball.

“I’m not hallucinating, I just saw someone! That wasn’t me!”

“Is this about that ghost you saw in the desert? Are you possessed?!” Bless Miguel. Bless sweet stupid Miguel, who might actually be right for once.

“They don’t feel like ghosts, they feel like real people.” He brushed between his friends to escape the sun that had moved overhead, finding shade in a doorway – the door itself was barred.

David shrugged and readjusted his shirt, following Scott to cool shadows, “I don’t know man, go to church or something?”

“My gran says-“

“Your grans crazy!”

“Hey! That’s my gran too, asshole!” Maria smacked David’s arm with a faux-fire. If she meant anything, she’d have smacked his face. Scott felt exhausted. Worn out and light, like he was floating. He saw all of these things happening the way he saw through a glass – distorted.

A cool expanse of plastic-like floor spread like water beneath his bare feet – that wasn’t right. He wasn’t barefoot. A clinical smell poisoned his senses, and a prickling chill fell through the air. It all dropped away as quickly as it had arrived. He had never really gone to church before despite to David’s vehemence. He was beginning to rethink that decision.

“Helpful, really helpful guys. C’mon let’s go get a drink.”

And the four of them, pious David, and spunky Maria, and dopey Miguel, and average Scott, skulked off down the alley to find some lemonade. Scott decided he would avoid alleys now too.


	4. I Take a Deep Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be a mess, I have no freakin clue I'm dead

Johannesburg, South Africa

 

In the depths of the clear pool Erica opened her eyes. Seven others swam around her, drifting like languid butterflies. Perhaps this was how mermaids looked; serene. It felt like gravity had been switched off entirely and they were the only creatures left in existence, the eight of them like the first and last eight stars burning in existence.

They floated around each other, all in different states of dress – or undress for some – like fairies in the water.

Names touched the edges of her mind, like whispers from a dream. Lydia, tendrils of soft red hair and a gentle pink cardigan, matching pumps slipping from her feet in the water. Boyd, cargo shorts dragging low on his hips under the weight of the water, and a tank top clinging to his chest. Allison, a black sports bra and hoodie, running shoes on her feet. Stiles, a hospital gown flowing to his bare shins. Jackson layered in monochromatic pyjamas and a dressing gown. Isaac in worn out jeans and an oversized t-shirt, and Scott, halfway through shedding his vet scrubs revealing his toned muscles underneath.

She didn’t feel scared. She didn’t overly question their presence, she didn’t feel unsafe – she felt calm. Tranquil. She completed her length with her mer-like entourage languidly swimming alongside her, and broke the surface of the water, cleansed. They had left and suddenly Erica felt lonely.

 

Kebbi, Nigeria

 

Boyd had been swaying rhythmically in his hammock, soft little swings that rocked with his breathing, when the world stilled beneath him. It was like feeling land after a day in the sea. Opening his lidded eyes, he found himself curled in the bay of a window seat, his side pressed against cold glass.

Raising his head, suddenly wide awake, he looked around the room. The floor was plastic, the walls white. There were two sterile beds, to match the pale light. A lonely grey figure sat on the floor, knees bent and head hung, leaning against the cot.

“Hi.”

“Piss off.” The boy was crying. Sobbing really, but trying not to or trying to hide it at least.

“I would, but I’m not sure how I got here in the first place.” Below the window, traffic purred softly, people milling and scurrying about. It looked like something from a movie.

The guy raised his head, a reproachful expression slipping from his face as he looked at Boyd directly. “Oh. Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

“Sorry to tell you but I’m no one but myself. My name is Boyd.”

“Jackson.”

“Why are you crying Jackson?”

“I’m not.” He was.

“It would seem that I’m meeting a lot of crying people lately. Is this South Africa too?”

“What? No, this is London you nutcase.” His shoulders were hunched. In his hands, he tried to hide a crumpled piece of newspaper, holding it with both reverie and loathing.

“What is that? In your hands?”

“None of your business.”

His shaking hands opened around the torn shred of newspaper, like a flower blooming. Boyd had lived enough of his life on the street to know what was in that parcel.

“Go on, go and tattle to the nurses and see if I care.” There was no conviction in his words – only hopelessness. Tentatively, Boyd eased his feet to the floor. It was freezing.

“Is this a hospital?”

“And the penny drops, great observation skills genius.” The deprecating grin slid from Jackson’s face and his shoulders heaved with a breath, “It’s not a hospital. This is rehab.”

Rehab. He’d heard about such a place, but no one he knew ever made it that far; no one could afford it, and no one really wanted to. They’d rather die warm and happy with the high than starving in a gutter after another long year of suffering.

“If this is a rehabilitation centre, why do you have that?” Boyd couldn’t be sure, but he was positive drugs were against the rules.

“Again, none of your damn business.”

“It must be my business, or else I wouldn’t be here.”

“I traded the janitor for it so I could hide it under my roomie’s mattress and get him kicked out.” Jackson seemed genuinely shocked he’d let the truth slip, but Boyd had been told before that he had that kind of face, the face that made people blurt out their truths.

“Why would you do that?”

“I don’t like people and besides, it’s his fourth time in here.”

“And this time he might have made it.”

“I don’t need you judging me okay? So piss off back to where ever it is you come from and leave me alone!” Boyd didn’t disappear like he’d expected to, and it only served to boil Jackson’s blood. “Get out! Leave!” It was uncomfortable watching the frustration writhe throughout his body, but just as Boyd moved to go to him, the parcel of paper came flying at him.

It hit against the wall, contents spilling everywhere, but Boyd was already gone.

 

Alice Springs, Australia

 

The steps he sat on were shaded from the burning sun. He toed a shard of glass beneath his chuck taylors, and his jeans were coated in dust blown in by the breeze. It was too hot. He didn’t care. His dad’s hiking boots lay discarded next to him, and in their place cradled in his shaking hands, was a bottle of jack.

He knew his dad had vices, and he’d sworn he’d never fall to the same flaws, but here he was. He’d been wasted once before – only once – when he was fourteen and he’d felt horrible things, and his dad had beaten him senseless for it.

“I was just on my way to see you, Isaac!” Maggie. Had she made the trek all the way up here? She’d mentioned she had a date tonight with her special beau, why was she here?

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you left your scarf at the diner. I wasn’t sure when you’d be down next, so I thought I’d drop it by.” She handed it to him, and the thick material felt comforting in his hands.

“You didn’t have to, I know I live so far out of town, but thanks.”

“No problem.” She sat on the steps next to him, and eyed the bottle in his hands casually. “Pity party or you got friends coming?”

“What friends?” They scoffed and chuckled. Despite actually having a lot of friends, Maggie still had a loner mind-set. “Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but what are you doing here? I thought you had a date tonight with that guy from the diner.”

“I did. He stood me up for Leila Brown, or at least that’s what Tina said.”

“He’s an idiot. Send him an invoice for that milkshake you gave him.”

“Thanks, Isaac. Want some drinking company?”

“Nah. I don’t think I can bring myself to even open it.”

“Okay. How about the cookies they give away at the bakery after expiry?”

“Now that’s something I can do.” A smile graced his lips, and Maggie echoed it in her own grinning beam of light.

 

California, United States

 

The sound of the hand-painted one of a kind designer artisan plate smashing against the wall wouldn’t stop ringing in her ears. Her mother hadn’t exactly thrown it _at_ her father, but it was close enough for him to throw one of the two limited edition hand-moulded vases back at her.

(There was dispute about who got what in the divorce – the more they broke what the other wanted, the more they could piss each other off)

There was too much noise in Lydia’s head, too much shouting and smashing and ripping and tearing. She rushed up the stairs, swivelling around people in her tear filled vision, she recognised Jackson but she slipped away from his outstretched arms. A dark haired girl clopping behind her in enormous heels, a curly head ducking out of the bathroom towards her, dark soft hands brushing her elbow, immaculate red lipstick, puppy eyes -

Her bedroom door slammed behind her as she leant back against it, muffling out the chaos below and the ghosts in her hallway. A silence finally echoed out in her mind.

“Are you okay?”

A boy sat on her bed in a hospital gown, looking up from a comic, like she’d disturbed him. Like she’d just stormed into his room and interrupted him.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m Stiles, I’m waiting for an MRI. Who are you?”

“I’m Lydia… This is my house.”

“Oh. I-If I’m losing my mind I think I’m doing a pretty good job of it. Quite a lot of detail for a crazy person.” He picked up a photo frame by her bed, holding a snapshot of her and her grandmother. She was wearing a little mermaid outfit.

“Great. First an English addict and now a European nutcase.” She sighed as the boy leafed through the mystery novel Lydia had left on the side of her bed (she’d figured it out by chapter three). “Are you a real person?” The boy was engrossed in her pencil case. “Listen, listen, you have to go, I need space right now, I need to figure this out and be left alone.” She stalked towards her desk where the files Jordan gave her lay, ignoring what she hoped was the last ghost to bother her tonight.

It hadn’t taken long to find the file of the missing woman by the lake (Lydia Martin was nothing if not efficient). Beneath the scattered official documents she’d photocopied, lay two drawings. One was a police sketch from the witness of a mugging, depicting the mugger, which had been attached to the woman’s file – a girl with messy dark hair and a scar through her lip.

The other was one Lydia had drawn herself while sifting through the filing cabinets Jordan had given her access to. A drawing of the girl by the lake. Art was a skill she’d never had, one that had miraculously appeared, but the picture was exactly like the woman she’d seen. The woman she had been blonde, but it was undoubtedly the same person, scar and all.

“Who is that?” Stiles’ voice inquired from over her shoulder.

“She said leave her alone, dumb arse.” Jackson.

“Both of you can go away.”

“The fuck are you?”

“Out!”

After a beat of silence, she peered round. Her room was empty.

The answer to Stiles’ question lay before her in bold black letters, staring up at her begging her to find the woman attached:

_Laura Hale._

 

Lublin, Poland

 

The gurney wasn’t cold. It wasn’t warm either. It just was, a presence beneath his body that felt wrong. His dad’s hand was clammy in his own as the nurses wheeled him to the wherever it was he’d have his MRI. He didn’t want to look at his dad because the man was studying every inch of his face like it was the last time he might see it. Last week – that was when he’d told his dad he’d been seeing people that weren’t there, that he’d been to the doctors, and that he was to have an emergency MRI that the doctor had pushed to the front of the waiting list.

Stiles couldn’t look at his dad. So instead he looked at the wall.

“Stiles.” Black clad hips strode into his vision against the shiny cream paint.

_A hard shoulder collided with him so strongly he was almost completely spun around. The man turned to glare at him, steel grey eyes colliding with his brown, and it felt like gravity took a swing at him, like he was falling and those grey eyes were his only anchor._

Those same steely eyes looked down at him now before peering at the clipboard over the shoulder of the nurse in front of him. “Stiles, you need to get out of here. As soon as they see your brain scans they’ll know what you are.”

They’d had to sedate him to get him on the gurney; he’d panicked. It could be a drug hallucination, but it felt real. He could see every fibre in those jeans, could see every dip in the leather jacket, he could _hear_ the boots against the linoleum floor.

“What am I?”                                   

“You’re my son Stiles, and I promise you everything will be okay.” It was distant, away in his periphery as the stranger’s face seemed to fill his vision.

“That’s a promise he can’t keep.” Strangely, it sounded as if the stranger was pleading with him.

Stiles’ head lolled upwards towards another face above him; it was one of the nurses. It was an unforgiving face. He felt a hiccup in his own heartbeat, “There are people out there that hunt people like us and soon as your MRI results come through, they will know exactly who you are, exactly where you live, and exactly how to kill you, so you need to get up Stiles and you need to run!”

“Who are you? Why am I losing my mind, what have you done to me?”

“Is that English? Is he speaking English, Stiles can barely speak Polish, what’s happening?”

“We need you to calm down Mr Stilinski, it’s just a hallucination most likely caused by stress. He’s absolutely fine.”

“My name is Derek Hale, and my cluster-mate killed herself to protect you, you and the others! She died so you could have a chance to live! I am not going to let you throw away her sacrifice so get up and run!”

Derek Hale was gone and in his wake a sense of urgency pumped through Stiles’ veins. Derek Hale, for whatever reason, was the realest thing he’d experienced in the past week. This is real, this is real, his mind said, so for whatever reason he pushed up off of the gurney. Get up. Run.

He didn’t get to sit up far before hands were forcing him down.

Stiles pushed against them, shouting words he couldn’t even hear over the blood rushing through his ears, before he was injected with something cold.

Get up.

Run.

_Run_.

 

London, England

 

His hands shook as he scrambled to gather the fine powder back together. Off of the window seat, from the skirting board, all along the floor. It was grimy now, tainted with dust and dirt, but it was still cleaner than some of the cuts he’d had in his back-alley days. His heart felt faint as he tried to scoop it back into the newspaper wrapping. He didn’t know he could feel pain like this by just looking at it. He was cold; it was a cold radiating out from his bones. God he hated this, he thought as he curled in on himself once more, shielding himself from the world.

Warm hands rested over his own, and he lifted his head, expecting to see the leathered face of the head nurse or perhaps the warm face of Boyd, instead meeting the eyes of Lydia.

Lydia, who came back.                             

She eased Jacksons feeble hands back and gently lifted the paper out.

“Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to get rid of it.”

Jackson felt exhaustion roll through his soul. He relented his grasp on the girl’s soft knuckles and let his eyes slip closed.

He felt okay.

 

Paris, France

The sun was setting over Mexico City. She knew, because she was watching it from the top of a building next to a boy with warm skin and soulful eyes. “I think we saw a horrible thing today.” Allison meant the girl of course, what else could she mean? The girl and her parents and their broken crockery and torn divorce papers.

“I think she’s okay.” Scott, his name was, she was sure it was Scott, “The girl. I think she’s okay.”

“What’s happening? I mean, appearing in places I have no place being in, feeling other people’s emotions, seeing out of other people’s eyes. I don’t understand it, it’s insane.” She worried her lip between her teeth. The grit beneath her hands felt real, the gentle hand of Scott felt real, the warm sun on her skin felt real, so shouldn’t that mean it was the genuine article?

“I don’t understand it either. But I don’t think we have to. It might not be a good thing, but why should it be a bad thing either?”

“Up until know I thought I was cursed or something, but I don’t think this seems like a bad thing at all anymore.” Allison met Scott’s eyes across the crisps they were sharing, and they held each other’s gaze until the sun went down.

 

Mexico City, Mexico

 

_“Hi Scott, its Deaton, listen you’ll be on your own in the clinic tomorrow morning for about an hour. I’ve got an emergency home visit, and I’ll need you to open up. There aren’t any appointments scheduled so I wouldn’t worry, just the usual you’ll have to get up to.”_

_“Of course, Doctor Deaton, that’s fine. I’ll be fine.”_

_Scott looked to his side, where the strange boy had not long ago appeared. He'd gone for a ride out of the city after Allison had fallen asleep, and only paused for breath when he felt a tingle up his side.The boy looked back at him, like he was a particularly challenging riddle. He was pasty, wrapped in a blue fleece blanket slouched against the wheel of Scott’s dirt bike. He seemed unfazed by the dust that flitted across the sand in the slight breeze. The dunes were not unknown for their oddity, but a lot of oddity had plagued Scott lately; too much to be considered normal._

_“Are you sure?” Scott had almost forgotten Deaton was on the other end of his phone, getting lost in the dazed face of the strange boy, “You don’t sound very_ fine _Scott.”_

_-_

At two in the morning the animal clinic felt wrong. Scott stood under a single low hanging light, the air rigid with conspiracy. The sterile exam table stood between him and Deaton, and if it hadn’t, Scott was sure Deaton would be hanging from his collar in desperation by now.

“Tell me again Scott. Tell me _exactly_ what happened.”

-

_“What’s your name?”_

_“I’m Stiles. What’s your name?”_

_“Scott.”_

_“Who are you?”_

_“I – I told you, I‘m Scott.”_

_“But what are you?”_

_“A veterinary assistant?”_

_“Wow, uh, okay. Why are you sitting on your ass in the middle of a desert at night?”_

_“It gets too hot in the day with my helmet on.”_

_“Okay, sure why not.” The scenery changed around them, a spacious living room lit only by the television._

_“What are you watching?”_

_“You’ve seriously never seen Star Wars?”_

_“What was that, Stiles?”_

_“N-Nothing dad, just thinking out loud.”_

-

“I knew it. You’ve been Born.”

“Born? Like born again?”

“Exactly. Your mind Scott, it’s expanding. You’ve been seeing impossible things and feeling impossible things and hearing impossible things, haven’t you?”

“Well, yeah-”

“And you feel like you’re the only one?” Scott looked around at the figures in the shadows. Their names whispered in his mind; Erica, Boyd, Jackson, Lydia, Stiles, Allison, Isaac. He didn’t feel like the only one. In fact, he didn’t feel lonely at all.

“Enough of the mysterious suspense crap, alright, just tell us what’s happening.”

“You see what just happened there? Someone else just took over your body for a split second to speak to me.” Deaton’s eyes were manic. It set Scott on edge more than he already was.

“It didn’t _feel_ like someone was taking over my body,” The exorcisms Miguel showed him on Youtube flashed through the back of his mind, “But yeah, Stiles just spoke.”

“He spoke through your mouth. Eventually you’ll learn how to control it, all of you. It comes naturally eventually. You are a sensate, Scott. You and ‘Stiles’ and everyone else you’ve been seeing. You’re all part of the same cluster. On the exact same moment across the world, you were all born; and again eighteen years later, you’re connections were unlocked through a second birth.”

“What does he mean second birth?” Isaac murmured quietly.

“I think he means _her_.”

Blonde hair, a flash, a gun, _red_.

“Oh.”

 


End file.
